Dinner at eight
by idioticonion
Summary: After having dinner with his Dad's family, Robin knows that Barney needs some time to come to terms with his emotions.


_Why is it so__  
><em>_That I've always been the one who must go__  
><em>_That I've always been the one told to flee__  
><em>_When it fact you were the one, long ago__  
><em>_Actually in the drifting white snow__  
><em>_You left me_  
><em> - Rufus Wainwright<em>

The rain beat a delicate drum on the windows and Robin waited. She wasn't waiting for anything in particular, she told herself. She was just content to sit and think and wind down from the stresses of the day. Robin waited until her reverie was interrupted by a sharp, desperate knock on the door to her and Ted's apartment.

Robin knew a desperate knock when she heard one. It was different from the irritable knock of Ted forgetting his keys. Nor was it like the expansive knock of Marshall, ready to regale you with an outpouring of heart-felt information on the environment. Nor did it resemble the eager, knowing knock of Lily, which spoke of a night ahead of friendship, gossip and wine.

No, this was a knock that had no depth, no timbre. It was a knock that just said that she should damn well open the door because the person really just needed it to be opened.

And so Robin opened it.

None of them had seen Barney in the last two days. After his dinner with Jerry, Barney had seemed shaken up, but stoic. Marshall spoke to him the next morning and told them that Barney was taking a couple of personal days off work. None of them really knew what to say, so they tried to be supportive by leaving him alone. That's what he'd asked them to do, after all.

But now, here he was at her door, looking for all the world like he'd slept in his suit and smelling like he'd opened his own brewery. But his eyes were bright and clear – surprisingly so. Robin frowned, nodded, and gestured that he should come inside, but he hesitated on the threshold, shivering and unsure. Then he spoke in that voice he sometimes used, that voice that was so chillingly un-Barney. Quietly, he said, "I think it's me. I think I'm just not ready."

Robin shook her head, confused. She wanted to ask him if he was okay but it seemed like a trite question. He evidently wasn't okay.

He swallowed, scrubbing one hand across his face. She could see the faint golden stubble across his chin, indicating he hadn't shaved in a while.

"Come in," she said firmly. "I'll make you some tea."

He smiled because it sounded funny. Since when did Robin Scherbatsky get so maternal?

"Maybe if you put a little whiskey in it," he replied, but she just tutted and led him into the kitchen. As she filled the kettle, from the corner of her eye she could see him standing there, looking so unravelled, so open, that it scared her. God, he looked so… human.

For a guy who has spent his entire life wrapped up in fantasy after elaborate fantasy – who, even now, told himself stories just to get through the day – what must it be like now he can't do that anymore? Now that he's been confronted by the stark reality of his past?

"So what do you mean, you're not ready?" She prompted him.

He frowned. Not the usual Barney-scowl, which heralded some theory or Bro-code or well-rehearsed response, but the genuine frown of a man confused.

"I'm not ready to be… this." He looked down at his own body, his damp suit clinging to his slendar frame. "I'm not ready to have a crappy, ordinary life and a crappy, ordinary Dad. I'm not ready to face this. You think I want to be acting this way? Jeez, I used to want to _be_ him. When I was in college, my whole future was set like that – wife, kids, house in the suburbs. You think I _want_ to know what I know? That it's all a fake? A lie? You think _Jerry_ isn't hiding something?" He spat out the words, bitterly. "You think good ol' Jerry isn't screwing someone around?"

Robin shook her head. "It's not all a lie Barney. It works for some people."

"Yeah, like it worked for your Mum and Dad!" He shot back. "Like it's working so well for you!"

Robin felt a hot flush of anger on her cheeks. "Dude."

"I'm sorry," he closed his eyes briefly, obviously knowing he'd crossed a line. "But I've seen you, Robin. I've seen you standing so tall, so proud, like nothing in the world can stop you. And then with just one call your Dad ruins that. It's like he freakin' does it _deliberately_, like he's making you prove your worth somehow, over and over."

"Fathers," Robin replied with a sardonic grimace. "They really get you where you live." She handed him a mug of hot tea.

"Well it's _that_," he said, taking the cup. "That's what I'm not ready for. I'm not ready for the endless disappointment, for that swooping feeling in my stomach that says I'm not quite good enough, that it was all my fault he left me, left my Mom. God, I remember so clearly now, stuff I thought I'd dealt with years ago. Stuff I didn't even know was important! Like how having him in my life when I was just a little kid, like how awesome that was. How he was the coolest guy I ever knew. And I hate that! I hate knowing that, Robin. I wish I didn't know."

His eyes were shining and she moved closer to him, close enough to smell the ghostly scent of his cologne, still clinging to him after a couple of days of rough living.

"You don't mean that," she said. But she wondered if she was just being hypocritical. After all, how exactly was it any different with her father? She'd cut R.C. out of her life years ago, and it was true that he still had the power to hurt her on a whim. "Look, this sucks," she continued. "Nobody is saying this doesn't suck. But people aren't perfect, Barney. And at least your Dad wants to know you and wants to be in your life. At least you've got that chance. You think I wouldn't give my Dad another chance, no matter what he's done?" She gulped, because this was getting too real for her. It was touching raw emotions that she didn't want exposed.

"I hate him," Barney looked and sounded like a little kid again, like an angry little kid who was just lashing out, and it broke Robin's heart to see that. Because she saw so much of herself in him, so much of herself just before Robin Sparkles, before she rebuilt herself in her own image, not her Dad's. She even saw shades of her adult self, where the scars of her father's neglect had been covered, not entirely healed. Oh yes, she understood Barney's fury right now and she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him in for a fierce hug and holding him until the tension eases in his shoulders and he leant into her.

"Nobody says this doesn't suck," she repeated, pressing her cheek into his. "Nobody says you have to deal with this alone, either." She lifted one hand to the back of his head, stroking his hair.

"I hate him," Barney said again, but the fight had drained out of his words. "And I think that, in some way, he hates me right back. After all, I've ruined his perfect façade of a life."

Robin laughed and he pulled away, frowning and hurt that she seemed to be dismissing his words.

"He loves you," Robin tried to explain. "He's your Dad."

Barney wrinkled his nose. "Oh right. _Love_. What does love get you?"

Then very gently, very softly, Robin kissed him on the lips. He blinked, and his eyes went wide with pain, and his forehead wrinkled up and he damn near broke her heart all over again.

"Mostly? It gets you pain, my friend," She answered. "But sometimes there's some good mixed in there too."

He leaned into her and hugged her again, burying his nose in her hair.


End file.
